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THE LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATON 


BY 

WM. W. BISHOP 


| Reprinted from School and Society, Vol. XI., No. 262, Pages 1 10 , January 2 , 1920] 






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[Reprinted from School and Society, Vol XL, No. 262, Pages 1-10, January 2,1920] 


THE LIBRARY AND POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION* 


I have been asked to speak on the sub¬ 
ject “The library an essential agent in 
conserving and advancing the results of 
formal school education.” To approach 
such a formidable topic we must first face 
the problem presented; must understand 
its scope and its meaning. Fundamental 
in any consideration of this subject is the 
question of how large a part of the citizen¬ 
ship of the country has had any formal 
education at all; that is, how far do our 
schools actually reach the population of 
school age of the United States ? 

It was a very disagreeable shock to most 
Americans to read the figures about illit¬ 
eracy in the National Army, a shock tem¬ 
pered only in part by the explanation that 
they were based on inability to read and 
write the English language. It would 
perhaps be an equally severe shock to the 
average taxpayer, who has become accus¬ 
tomed to lavish expenditures for schools, 
to realize how very large is the number of 
people who manage to avoid even the 
merest rudiments of formal education, 
either by direct escape from all schooling, 
or by dropping out after a few terms. 
Despite our compulsory school laws, and 
despite child-labor laws, it is a matter of 
common knowledge to all schoolmen that 
there is a steady dropping away after the 
earlier years. To this we have become so 
accustomed that we ordinarily take the 
facts for granted, and fail to realize their 
significance to society. Masses of our citi- 

i An address at the Educational Congress, Al¬ 
bany, May, 1919. 


zenship have had but a few terms in school 
and other masses have escaped formal edu¬ 
cation altogether. It is perhaps not too 
much to say that the average American 
citizen—to say nothing of the notoriously 
illiterate mass of foreign-born dwelling 
among us—has had so little schooling that 
it has formed a minor part of his edu¬ 
cation. 

What has educated the unschooled or 
the partly-schooled? It is of course silly 
to deny that they have had an education— 
every adult human being has had one. 
Primarily, of course, it has been their con¬ 
tact with their kind, their social life which 
has trained them. And this is, equally of 
course, true of even the most highly de¬ 
veloped product of the schools. President 
Wilson once remarked at Princeton—and 
it was one of his most profound observa¬ 
tions on college life—that there was fully 
as much education going on in the college 
between four in the afternoon, when the 
classes closed, and eight in the morning, 
when they began, as between eight and 
four. The home is the primary center of 
early education—and its efficiency is said 
to be sadly weakened of late years. But 
by bitter necessity, his occupation, his 
business, is the chief agent in the educa¬ 
tion the average mortal secures. I need 
not labor the proposition—it is so true 
and so patent that most professional edu¬ 
cators never see it at all. It is the 
struggle of wits in the earning of daily 
bread that educates in the truest and most 
effective sense the ordinary man or woman. 


2 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


Important factors in average education 
are the various occupations of such leisure 
hours as come to most folk. Whether it 
is a game of pool, or attendance on a base¬ 
ball game, some form of sport enjoyed 
either as a witness or as a partaker, 
dancing, cards, a social smoke, the theater, 
the movies, or what not—recreation and 
amusement have their share in educating 
us. A very large share it is, too, and it 
is likely to become larger with that short¬ 
ening of the working day which seems in¬ 
evitable. The church has a part in edu¬ 
cation, to some extent a formal part in 
teaching, as well as in service, sermon, 
and social ministration. Clubs of all sorts, 
associations, unions, societies, have their 
share. Man is molded by other men in his 
work and in his play. 

And then there is print: not books 
merely, but all printed things. News¬ 
papers first—and for many, many thou¬ 
sands last also, and all the time! Trade- 
papers, too, and pamphlets and posters. 
The number of newspaper readers in these 
United States must, it would seem, include 
every one who can read. The number of 
journals is legion. They all have their 
share in the education—such as it is— 
which our average man gets. And the 
weeklies! Not alone the ubiquitous Post 
which is read by perhaps one twentieth 
of our population each week, but scores 
of others, from the county newspapers to 
the obscurest trade-journal. Then there 
are the monthly magazines—many of them 
very cheap, and, I fear you would say, 
nasty also. We are the most newspapered 
and magazined nation on earth, I suppose, 
although I never dared get into the class 
of statisticians—you know their reputa¬ 
tion. And last—and very much least, so 
far as effect on our masses goes—there are 
books. A hundred men read newspapers 
everyday of their lives for one who reads a 


book even occasionally. Thus are the un¬ 
schooled educated by their kind and by 
print. 

May I interject a word at this point? 
The education thus achieved is by no 
means necessarily bad. It is merely im¬ 
perfect and inadequate. No matter how 
much schooling a man has had, he will 
not escape education by his fellows and by 
the newspapers. He will, let us hope, sup¬ 
plement both by wisdom gained from 
books and teachers. 

As the years go on, and as our schools 
grow, more persons in proportion to the 
whole mass will have had formal training 
in a high school. And yet their number 
is both actually and relatively small at the 
present day. It is notorious that attend¬ 
ance on the early years of high school 
greatly outnumbers that in the later years, 
while the graduates generally form but a 
fraction of the number entering. Look¬ 
ing at secondary education from any ad¬ 
vanced or even from a general viewpoint, 
its results seem rather slim and meager, 
particularly for those who have no further 
schooling. It may well be questioned 
whether the adolescent of eighteen leaving 
high school has any very profound knowl¬ 
edge or unusual equipment. He is, how¬ 
ever, far more susceptible to the influence 
of print and of the higher forms of amuse¬ 
ment than is the youth of the same age 
who lacks his training. To him books, in 
particular, make a direct appeal, however 
shallow his judgments on them. As a 
rule most high-school students have come 
into active contact with one or more for¬ 
eign languages. This means far more to 
their education than is often apparent to 
the critics of curricula. Whatever may be 
the sum total of the effect of the study of 
foreign languages, there is slight question 
that it broadens in a peculiar way the 
mental horizon of the student. Such study 
awakens him to the existence of other 


cm 

Camugie lull* 

j i! M 2 0 1923 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


3 


literatures as the reading of the vernacular 
ordinarily does not. Most high-school stu¬ 
dents get some instruction in history— 
and they all in these days are put through 
several years of what is known as ‘‘Eng¬ 
lish.” They are not made competent 
critics of the great problems of life and 
thought by their high-school training; they 
are given the means to read widely and to 
base their conclusions on at least wider 
data than newspapers alone afford. 

Then there is a small, a very small, per¬ 
centage of our population who have had a 
collegiate, professional, or technical edu¬ 
cation. This percentage is slowly but 
surely increasing, and is ordinarily, of 
course, regarded by teachers and pro¬ 
fessional “educators” as a leaven destined 
to raise popular taste and to form the 
opinions of the multitude. Thanks largely 
to our state universities and our city 
colleges our college graduates do not come 
from the homes of the wealthy and the 
urban middle class alone, but represent to 
an ever increasing degree the homes of 
farmers and of wage-earners as well. 
There is small question in my mind that 
it is his receptivity to new ideas which 
chiefly distinguishes the college graduate 
from his fellows—and particularly to new 
ideas meeting him through the medium of 
print. A student well trained in the 
liberal arts is notoriously likely to be more 
proficient in professional and technical 
studies than one versed only in the ele¬ 
ments of such studies—largely, it would 
seem, by reason of his familiarity with 
books and printed things and his agility 
resulting from a variety of mental exer¬ 
cises. Toward books at least such prod¬ 
ucts of the college and technical schools 
are likely to be at once friendly, ac¬ 
customed, easy—and yet discriminating. 
There is no mystery about the printed 
page which rouses either undue reverence 


or instinctive distrust. Your college man 
has seen too much of the manufacturing 
of such stuff. 

We have then—as regards the results of 
formal education—schooling, or whatever 
we should call it—a mass of partly lettered 
folk, a slightly smaller mass of what that 
peppery Irishman, Richard Stanyhurst, so 
aptly termed “meanly lettered,” and a 
small number of better-trained minds. 
All of them in our democracy vote on an 
equality. As a matter of fact, those whom 
the world’s work has educated to leader¬ 
ship come largely—but by no means 
wholly, as commencement orators would 
have us believe 1 —from the smaller group 
whose formal training has been long and 
thorough. What is the attitude of the 
whole toward print—particularly toward 
books? The answer to that question estab¬ 
lishes the present, and to a great degree 
the future, status of the people’s library 
in our communities. 

Supposing that practically all our peo¬ 
ple can read—save that per cent, whose 
eyes are holden by lack of teaching— ivhat 
do they read? As I said above, they read 
journals, newspapers, magazines—and a 
very few books. The laws, postal and eco¬ 
nomic, make for the publication of period¬ 
icals of all sorts. They are distinctly 
the present-day mode, whether in publish¬ 
ing the results of the most recondite scien¬ 
tific research or in reporting baseball 
games. The trades and occupations too 
have their journals, frequently half a 
dozen to each calling. Look over any 
news-stand and for once note the magazine 
titles, particularly of those you never read 
or think of reading. Compare notes with 
any grocer or barber or clothier or brick¬ 
layer. They all with one accord will tell 
you that they read their own trade papers. 
Prom the labor union to the Society of 
Mechanical Engineers, every organization 


4 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


issues a weekly, monthly or quarterly 
paper. Moreover, the pamphlet which in 
the eighteenth century outran the news¬ 
papers in popularity—thanks largely to 
the stamp-tax—has again come into its 
own. I have no means of compiling 
figures on the production of pamphlets in 
the civilized world in the last five years, 
but I can bear witness—as can every 
librarian—to the marvelous number pro¬ 
duced by the war and its varied phases of 
propaganda. They must have reached 
literally hundreds of thousands of titles in 
Western Europe and North America alone. 
And they are read by thousands to Whom 
—seemingly—a bound book is anathema. 

But good newspapers—really great news¬ 
papers—are becoming less and less com¬ 
mon. The morning press is before our 
eyes slowly passing away under the daily 
assaults of the cheap evening paper, run 
essentially to sell advertising and for no 
other end. Commercial journalism is a 
highly profitable business, and the pur¬ 
veying of real news is one of its slightest 
concerns—at least, so it seems to an ob¬ 
server, prejudiced, no doubt, because al¬ 
ways in search of real news, the happen¬ 
ings of the whole world. Despite the 
destruction of huge forests yearly to fur¬ 
nish the pulp-paper for these countless 
editions, it is to be doubted whether we 
have any dissemination of accurate infor¬ 
mation at all commensurate to the waste 
of trees. But we all read—and buy! 
Doubtless we shall continue to follow this 
river of text in an ever-widening margin 
of advertising to the end of our days—or 
until the river runs out entirely. 

I do not exaggerate this paucity of news. 
If there is anything on Which the Amer¬ 
ican people should have had abundant and 
accurate information during the years 
1918 and 1919, it is on events and condi¬ 
tions in Eastern and Central Europe. But 


we all know how little we have had of 
real information. I don’t know, you don’t 
know, what has actually been going on in 
Warsaw and Moscow and Budapest, and 
Sofia and Odessa and Constantinople, 
since the armistice was signed in November 
last! Those little papers published weekly 
in Russian and Polish and Bohemian in 
certain small cities and towns in our 
country have carried pages of real letters 
and news accounts, I am told; but not so 
even our great metropolitan dailies. We 
have been fed with fantastic stories from 
one side or the other, each more lurid than 
the other—but what are the facts? Cer¬ 
tainly they are not found in our ordinary 
journals. In truth it is only in our 
libraries—and then only when they are 
conducted on progressive lines—that a man 
(not possessed of abundant means) can 
get at the real news of the day. Here he 
can find papers of varying shades of opin¬ 
ion and belief. Here he can read pam¬ 
phlets and journals which the man in the 
street necessarily misses. Here he can 
correct the omissions of the local or the 
metropolitan press. He can—if he will— 
inform himself. He can not at the club or 
in the train or in his home back of the 
stock-yards. 

But he can do none of these things if the 
libraries have not been awake to the news 
situation. If they have not understood 
the difficulties, and if their boards of 
trustees have failed to back them up in 
providing the unusual journals and the 
less common papers. Not alone the or¬ 
dinary run of magazines and papers which 
are found in the homes of cultivated 
people, but the new, the unusual, the for¬ 
eign, should be in even moderate-sized 
public libraries, if they are to fulfill their 
function of supplying information and 
real news to the people who support them. 

Did you ever stop to consider the rela- 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


5 


tion between the modem apartment which 
has no room for book-shelves, the modern 
house too small for our fathers’ copious 
black-walnut book-cases, and the gradual 
decay of the book-store in the United 
States? Do you ever ask yourself what 
sort of books children grow up with now- 
adays? Did you ever—as many a chil¬ 
dren’s librarian has done—try to find out 
what books are actually owned in the 
homes from which the school children 
come? If you did, I am sure you have 
been appalled at the paucity of books—the 
actual dearth of books you have supposed! 
every one knew by sight at least. The 
Bible is still the world’s best seller—but 
there are thousands of homes, American 
homes at that, wfithout one. In fact there 
are thousands of homes in our land with¬ 
out any books except mail-order catalogues 
and text-books which the children bring 
back from school. 

And did you ever seriously stop to in¬ 
quire as to the sort of books children 
ordinarily see in small news-shops? Go 
into any city or town and make a list of 
the titles of the books in the windows of 
the little stores where tobacco, candy, 
“notions,” and cheap books crowd one 
another. I made a study of the books ex¬ 
posed for sale on West Madison Street in 
Chicago twenty-five years ago. It was a 
revelation to me. And only the other day 
in Buffalo I walked up from the station 
to the Public Library, and incidentally in¬ 
spected the windows of two shops. Well, 
I found that the public taste had not 
altered very much! Jesse James and the 
Younger Brothers were still there, in a 
trifle more attractive guise. Instead of 
“Scarlet Sin” and other equally startling 
and fetching titles (with crude cover illus¬ 
trations of the nude!) there was a sheet 
calling itself as a sub-title “America’s 
most spicy sex-magazine.” The dime 


novel of my boyhood (by no means all bad, 
far from it!) had been changed only in 
outward form and the aeroplane and motor 
substituted for the hero’s or the villian’s 
dashing steed. Yes—the children of the 
poor have an alluring sett of titles offered 
them daily. It is a wonder that the chil¬ 
dren’s rooms in the library make any 
headway against this display—and really 
the fact that the children throng to them 
seems to me a tribute to the essential 
soundness of boy and girl nature. 

And did you ever try to buy a book in 
one of our very small towns or villages? 
How often have I endeavored to find some¬ 
thing even passable in the little, fly-specked 
group in the local drug-store. The last 
time I was marooned in a village for 
twenty-four hours I could only discover 
the Detective Story Magazine , having, I 
must confess, already read that week’s 
Saturday Evening Dost. By the way, the 
most interesting part of said Detective 
Magazine was the half dozen pages of ad¬ 
vertisements—mainly for news of persons 
who had disappeared and never communi¬ 
cated with their families. But what is a 
mere annoyance to the passing stranger 
must represent a serious difficulty to the 
residents. Books are now sold in large 
numbers by the mail-order houses, but 
there are good book-stores in too few of 
our towns and villages. The department 
stores have well-nigh driven the retail 
book-sellers out of business in the cities. 
The fact is that our population—despite 
the enormous number of periodicals—is 
coming to be more and more dependent on 
libraries for even a sight of good books, 
to say nothing of the chance to read them. 
I offer no explanation of these conditions. 
I merely call your attention to the facts. 
On libraries lies the responsibility of fur¬ 
nishing printed matter other than the 
sheet bought for a cent or two and dis- 


6 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


carded in the street-car on the way home 
from work. Post-school education so far 
as it is to be got from books, is likely for 
nine tenths of our people to be got from 
books in libraries. Private libraries are 
few and small outside of a select number 
of homes. Book-stores are fewer year by 
year despite heroic efforts of booksellers 
and publishers. Libraries are more than 
an agent in conserving and advancing the 
results of formal school instruction; they 
are in most cases the agent, the only one 
possible for the average young man or 
woman seeking further knowledge from 
books. 

But no such statement as this—however 
positively made—gets very far-—unless peo¬ 
ple acquire early in life the habit of using 
libraries in an efficient and comfortable way, 
there is little chance of the library aiding 
very much in conserving the results of 
schooling. The chief task of librarians at 
the present dlay appears to be that of over¬ 
coming the indifference of the community 
to their wares—and the inertia resulting 
from that indifference. It is a rare child 
who says to himself on graduating from 
school: “Now I must keep what I have 
won. I’ll go regularly to the library and 
read three nights a week.” Unless the 
library has established direct contact with 
school children, contact apart from school 
work as well as in it, it is vain to expect 
much use from the child released from the 
bondage of school duties to the greater 
servitude of daily labor. It is vitally im¬ 
portant, if the results of education are to 
be conserved, that both librarians and 
teachers realize the need of cultivating the 
habitual and voluntary use of the library 
by children. If as a permanent result of 
schooling and of the persistent and intelli¬ 
gent effort of children’s librarians, there 
is formed the habit of turning to the 
library for help in work and for recreation, 


then the results of school training are with¬ 
out doubt in a fair way to be not only 
kept, but deepened and strengthened. 

If this contact is lost, it devolves on the 
librarian to restore it. Planning for such 
contact is one of the chief duties of a 
librarian—a duty too often overlooked. 
No matter how excellent the library on the 
technical side, if it stands unused and 
empty, if young people do not seek it 
of their own accord, then it is a poorly 
managed library. I shall not weary you 
with advice nor describe the subtle and 
effective methods of advertising now com¬ 
ing into vogue. Window-displays in stores 
and in the library building, efforts to seize 
current interest in various topics and to 
turn people to books about them; all these 
things are but aids toward making the con¬ 
tact between people and books. It is the 
librarian’s chief problem. Tie is gradually 
learning ways of meeting it, but he should 
surely begin with school-children and hope 
never to lose them from his roll of clients. 
Such other aids to the creation and main¬ 
tenance of this contact as are in vogue, 
lectures, story-hours, and the like, may 
well serve his purpose. But it is the con¬ 
scious study of this problem as his chief 
business which will most surely win the 
results aimed at. Each community, each 
group in the community, presents a differ¬ 
ent phase of this absorbing task. Bring¬ 
ing people and books together in the right 
way and at the right time is, must always 
be, the librarian’s largest work. And on 
his success to a great degree depends the 
conserving of the results of school training. 

But if the problem be vital not alone to 
the success of libraries, but to that of 
civilization, no less vital is a clear con¬ 
ception of what is aimed at and hoped for 
in promoting the reading habit beyond the 
school experience. The most precious 
fruits of education, those which most of all 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


7 


require care and help for their persistence, 
their preservation, are those ideals of con¬ 
duct and those standards of taste which 
teachers have striven to instill. Not geo¬ 
metrical theorems or algebraic formulae 
remain in the memory and become part of 
the mental fiber of a youth versed in 
mathematics—but a residuum of study 
which recognizes the necessity for logical 
demonstration and for exact reasoning 
and reckoning. The things of the spirit 
are the highest product of formal educa¬ 
tion. Their conservation is more imper¬ 
ative a duty, more honorable a care in¬ 
trusted to our libraries than the purvey¬ 
ing of business information or of recipes 
for cooking jam tarts. No agency is more 
potent in this preservation of ideals than 
certain types of books. Poetry and the 
drama above all serve this purpose. We 
respond to their appeal to our generosity, 
our loftiness of purpose, our imagination, 
our moral sense. They take us out of our¬ 
selves for the time. That katharsis which 
so impressd Aristotle as the supreme func¬ 
tion of poetry is still its great apology. 
We are purged of the dross of self and 
gain and strife while we rise to the heights 
of the poet’s fancy, or follow breathlessly 
the rapid movement of dramatic action. 
And to poetry and drama the modern age 
has added the story, the supreme vehicle 
for conveying the message of the great 
artist, the great teacher. Than these three 
there are no greater or worthier means of 
keeping alive lofty ideals, high purpose, 
serene temper. 

In fact in this day the civic and educa¬ 
tional value of recreative reading seems 
to be slightly obscured in favor of sup¬ 
posedly practical and informational books. 
But on a little reflection any one of us 
must admit that there are few influences 
more pregnant with possibilities of high 
results than recreational reading. By 


every means should it be encouraged by 
librarians; instead of which we find them 
pointing with pride to its decrease. Eighty 
per cent, of fiction circulated is generally 
a lamented and decried item in an annual 
report. But to me it is properly an 
occasion for congratulation, for pride. If 
the fiction be good, wholesome stuff, rat¬ 
tling good stories, exciting and interesting 
novels, purposeful, artistic studies of real 
life, then the more of it read, the better. 
I would rather my boy would read a good 
story than spend the same time in a pool- 
room. I would rather read a good story 
myself than write papers for educational 
congresses. And I would be far prouder 
to think that I had introduced a com¬ 
munity to such clean and wholesome books 
as, for instance. “Back Home,” “The 
Prodigal Judge,” A Certain Rich Man,” 
“Gold”—not to mention hundreds of 
others—than to know that I had helped 
some scores of people to information of 
passing moment and interest. The scholar 
does not decry recreational reading. He 
rather recalls Cicero’s noble words in the 
Oration for Archias on the worth of 
humane letters, their constant companion¬ 
ship in duress and in joy, their comfort 
and their permanence. He recalls Dante’s 
eulogy on Vergil—and he knows from his 
own life, what the recreation afforded by 
works of the imagination means to him. 
Denunciation of fiction reading is really 
crass Philistinism. The guiding of choice 
in fiction is a precious privilege granted to 
librarians. And in exercising it they must 
not forget the stern competition which 
they run with the shop window stories and 
with every other form of amusement. 

One of the most successful aids to hold¬ 
ing children to a habit of reading is the 
keeping up of the interest in some subject 
which has attracted them in their school 
days. It is a poor boy or girl’ who de- 


8 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


velops no hobby in school life—at least who 
does not get started on the way to make a 
hobby out of an interest. His schooling 
may or may not advance him very far on 
that road. But the library can frequently 
give him the opportunity which the school 
can not. To the end of keeping alive an 
interest already aroused, the library and 
the school should be in close touch. The 
librarian should have the means of letting 
pupils know that there are scores, hun¬ 
dreds, even thousands of books on subjects 
which they first meet in class. For ex¬ 
ample, the geography classes open up the 
whole fascinating array of books on travel 
in the library. An exhibit in the school, 
or a visit of a class to the library may 
reveal to students possibilities of reading 
which will hold their attention and draw 
them to the library for years. Wherever 
there is a boy or girl genuinely interested 
in something on which books are written, 
there is a chance for the librarian to 
conserve—yes, to advance—the results of 
formal study. It is perfectly proper for 
him to buy books for the express purpose 
of promoting and keeping interest in 
some subject which has originated in the 
school. It is perfectly legitimate and in¬ 
deed highly advisable to conserve clients 
to the library by keeping up human in¬ 
terest in all manner of topics—even when 
interest develops into that sort of hobby 
which makes life uncomfortable for the 
neighbors. 

It is a proper thing also for the librarian 
to try hard to serve that smaller class 
which has received higher education. Most 
of us have stretched funds to the utmost to 
do it. But too few of the librarians of the 
smaller towns and cities have understood 
how easily by means of the inter-library 
loan they may serve people whose needs 
are so special and so advanced that they 
far outrun the meager resources of small 


libraries. A librarian who is alive to the 
possibilities of borrowing unusual books 
for an unusual need, who knows the re¬ 
sources in books of the larger libraries, is 
a veritable blessing to the scholar isolated 
by occupation or need in an out-of-the- 
way place. To him such a librarian brings 
—at too high a charge as yet—the re¬ 
sources of the whole country. In fact 
practically everything is available by 
means of photoduplication—only the proc¬ 
ess costs a good bit. We shall yet get 
that cost down to a trifle, and then a 
librarian will have an agency of tremen¬ 
dous power in conserving clientele and in 
serving his town. Service to business is 
on much the same footing. It can and 
should 1 be given—but too few are able to 
give it. The small town or small city 
library will fulfill its educational function 
only when it pays a living salary to a live 
librarian. 

Were the educational function of the 
library confined to conserving the results 
both spiritual and intellectual of formal 
schooling, it would have ample justifica¬ 
tion for its existence, even aside from its 
services of another sort. But fortunately 
the library’s work in advancing the results 
of formal education is equally patent, 
although necessarily such work appeals to 
a smaller group. What it lacks in number, 
however, it gains in definiteness. Vague 
problems, vaguely felt, are seldom well 
solved. But when we face very definite 
and particular needs, we generally make 
some measure of advance in meeting them. 
Such a need is found in the present efforts 
to establish continuation schools of various 
sorts. With the work of these schools you 
are perforce more familiar than I. You 
know how far they are vocational, how far 
they are elementary, how far advanced. 
But unless I miss my guess, there are none 
of them which could not profit by close 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


9 


contact with the public library. The 
library can and should aid the instruction 
with books. It can easily provide (either 
at the school or in its own quarters) books 
both directly helpful in the instruction 
given and those leading on to further 
study. Night-schools and continuation 
schools offer a ripe field for the library’s 
cooperation—a field perhaps as yet too 
much neglected. 

There is pressing need in this country 
for Americanization work, for unfolding 
in a sympathetic manner the history, the 
government, the spirit of America to its 
foreign population. About this need and 
this movement also you are doubtless 
better informed than I. May I say, in 
passing, that it is my conviction that so- 
called Americanization will succeed just 
so far as it is done in a friendly, neigh¬ 
borly, sympathetic way? If we say to 
these folk—“Forget all you are and have 
been! Become like us! Be Americans!” 
we are not likely to win them to that spirit 
of democracy which we hold as our 
choicest possession. But if we lead them 
to know our ideals, to understand our 
ways, to comprehend their rights and 
duties as part of our body politic, if in 
short, we try to have them keep the best 
of their own past and take on our own 
spirit as well, we may have some hope of 
success. And the public library can do— 
is doing—much to aid. It can assist in 
direct instruction and can furnish much 
material in addition. There are few ave¬ 
nues of its work so promising of results— 
so well worth following. If we do our 
duty by continuation schools and Amer¬ 
icanization work we shall surely justify 
our claims to recognition as an essential 
agent in popular education. 

But not alone in these formal classes 
is popular education carried on. Few 
people realize the extent to which the 


American people are organized into clubs 
and societies. If you will but cast up your 
own bills for annual dues of one sort and 
another, and will then multiply them by 
some such figure as one hundred million, 
you will begin to have some notion of how 
far we are grouped into social units. Not 
all clubs offer a field for the library’s 
work. But it is wholly incorrect to sup¬ 
pose that the women’s clubs alone read 
papers and use books to get -them up. In 
any community, urban or rural, there are 
literally scores of clubs which might find 
books and periodicals of great assistance in 
their work. It is the librarian’s privilege 
and duty to seek these out and to minister 
to their needs—of course with tact and un¬ 
derstanding. They have a right to his 
services, and by those services the results 
of school training may well be advanced. 
The fact that the women’s clubs have dis¬ 
covered the library is no reason why they 
should capture it. The same sort of serv¬ 
ice—rendered frequently in a different 
way—may be given to a great variety of 
other organizations. And thereby the li¬ 
brary furthers popular education in a 
definite way, instead of shooting in the air. 

Perhaps the strangest gap in the cor¬ 
porate relations of our public libraries has 
been their almost total failure to get into 
touch with labor unions. To ignore the 
unions in the present age is to cut our¬ 
selves off from one of the strongest and 
most vital forces moving in our social 
cosmos. As individuals many thousand 
union members make use of their libraries. 
And I have known some few librarians 
who have succeeded in keeping in active 
and efficient touch with the unions as such. 
Labor is undoubtedly going to secure a 
shorter working day than has been cus¬ 
tomary. Those hours released from toil 
must be spent somewhere. Need I say 
more? Is not the librarian’s duty and 


10 


SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 


privilege plain in that very statement by 
itself? And is any duty more imperative 
than that of winning and holding to the 
reading habit the men of our land? It 
is not going to be done by the methods or 
the books which have been most in vogue 
among us. But it needs to be done—and 
that right soon. 

And then there is the real student who 
is trying to keep up his studies—fre¬ 
quently amid the cares of his business or 
profession. In these days when so much 
of the world’s discussion of science and 
the arts is produced in journals, the plight 
of the student lacking access to such jour¬ 
nals is frequently pitiable. He can seldom 
buy more than a fraction of what he needs. 
He must depend on the library to aid him. 
And generally the librarian is forced to 
regard him as but one unit demanding 
much for his own use as against some 
thousands demanding little. But I appeal 
to the good sense of librarians and to their 
intelligence in urging them not to forget 
their duty toward scholarship. The high- 
school teacher trying to keep up his univer¬ 
sity work in physics or biology or Greek 
or history deserves our special aid and 
consideration. The young chemist in the 
big industrial plant, the young doctor with 
a special interest, the lawyer working up 
a line he began in law school, the clergy¬ 
man yet intent on some phase of his read¬ 
ing despite the calls on his time and his 


sympathies, the boy in the shops who digs 
away at Spanish—these are our rare and 
special clients. If we retain the spirit of 
the humanists, if we are true to the tra¬ 
ditions of librarianship, we shall sacrifice 
much to aid such as these. We shall beg 
and borrow and buy for them. And we 
shall be of some little service, perchance, to 
the advancement of true learning. 

There has come a great change in our 
library work. We librarians are con¬ 
vinced that we serve all the people—not a 
part alone, as most folk have supposed. 
We are trying to survey the whole field of 
our work—to understand our towns and 
cities and the countryside as well. We 
are studying them, charting the possi¬ 
bilities. We believe that we can make 
books useful and helpful to many people 
who seldom think of them. We are ready 
to cooperate with business and with labor, 
with schools and clubs and churches and 
homes. We serve all—and chiefly do we 
serve education, organized and individual. 
But no longer are we content to serve 
vaguely, indefinitely, hoping that we may 
somehow do good. We are striving for 
the actual, the concrete in service, and we 
are reaching our aim more and more surely 
each year. Thus—and thus only—shall 
we succeed by the very definiteness of our 
aim and of our labors in conserving and in 
advancing the results of school training. 

William Warner Bishop 

Librarian op the University of Michigan 


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